and in a few words. Its chief propositions follow necessarily from the metaphysical grounds already cited. First, it follows from these, that what is called free will cannot be admitted. For since man is only a mode, he, like every other mode, stands in an endless series of conditioning causes, and no free will can therefore be predicated of him. The will must thus, like the body (and the resolution of the will is only a modification of the body), be determined by something other than itself. Men regard themselves as free only because they are conscious of their actions and not of the determining causes. Just so the notions which one commonly connects with the words good and evil, rest on an error as follows at once from the conception of the absolute divine causality. Good and evil are not something actually in the things themselves, but only express relative conceptions which we have formed from a comparison of things with one another. Thus, by observing certain things we form a certain universal conception, which we thereupon treat as though it were the rule for the being and acting of all individuals, and if any individual varies from this conception we fancy that it does not correspond to its nature, and is incomplete. Evil or sin is therefore only something relative, for nothing happens against God's will. It is only a simple negation or deprivation, which only seems to be a reality in our representation. With God there is no idea of the evil. What is therefore good and what evil? That is good which is useful to us, and that evil which hinders us from partaking of a good. That, moreover, is useful to us which brings us to a greater reality, which preserves and exalts our being. But our true being is knowledge, and hence that only is useful to us which aids us in knowing; the highest good is the knowledge of God; the highest virtue of the mind is to know and love God. From the know ledge of God we gain the highest gladness and joy of the mind, the highest blessedness. Blessedness, hence, is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.

The grand feature of Spinoza's philosophy is that it buries every thing individual and particular, as a finite, in the abyss of the divine substance. With its view unalterably fixed upon the

eternal one, it loses sight of every thing which seems actual in the ordinary notions of men. But its defect consists in its inability to transform this negative abyss of substance into the posi tive ground of all-being and becoming. The substance of Spinoza has been justly compared to the lair of a lion, which many footsteps enter, but from which none emerge. The existence of the phenomenal world, though it be only the apparent and deceptive reality of the finite, Spinoza does not explain. With his abstract conception of substance he cannot explain it. And yet the means to help him out of the difficulty lay near at hand. He failed to apply universally his fundamental principle that all de-. termination is negation; he applied it only to the finite, but the abstract infinite, in so far as it stands over against the finite, is also a determinate; this infinite must be denied by its negation, which is the case when a finite world is posited. Jacob Boehme rightly apprehended this, when he affirmed, that without a selfduplication, without an ingress into the limited, the finite, the original ground of things is an empty nothing (cf. § XXIII. 8). So the original ground of Spinoza is a nothing, a purely indeterminate, because with him substance was only a principle of unity and not also a principle of distinction, because its attributes, instead of being an expression of an actual difference and a positive distinction to itself, are rather wholly indifferent to itself. The system of Spinoza is the most abstract Monotheism that can be thought. It is not accidental that its author, a Jew, should have brought out again this view of the world, this view of absolute identity, for it is in a certain degree with him only a consequence of his national religion—an echo of the Orient.

SECTION XXVII.

IDEALISM AND REALISM.

We have now reached a point of divergence in the development of philosophy. Descartes had affirmed and attempted to mediate the opposition, between thought and being, mind and matter. This mediation, however, was hardly successful, for the two sides of the opposition he had fixed in their widest separation, when he posited them as two substances or powers, which reciprocally negated each other. The followers of Descartes sought a more satisfactory mediation, but the theories to which they saw themselves driven, only indicated the more clearly that the whole premise from which they started must be given up. At length Spinoza abandoned the false notion, and took away its substantiality from each of the two opposed principles. Mind and matter, thought and extension, are now one in the infinite substance. Yet they are not one in themselves, which would be the only true unity of the two. That they are one in the substance is of little avail, since they are indifferent to the substance, and are not immanent distinctions in it. Thus even with Spinoza the two remain strictly separate. The ground of this isolation we find in the fact that Spinoza himself did not sufficiently renounce the Cartesian notion, and thus could not escape the Cartesian dualism. With him, as with Descartes, thought is only thought, and extension only extension, and in such an apprehension of the two, the one necessarily excludes the other. If we would find an inner mediation for the two, we must cease to abstract every thing essential from each. The opposite sides must be mediated even in their strictest opposition. To do this, two ways alone were possible. A position could be taken either on the material or on the ideal side, and the attempt made to explain the ideal under the material, or the material under the ideal, comprehending one through the other. Both these attempts were

in fact made, and at about the same time. The two parallel courses of a one-sided idealism, and a one-sided realism (Empiricism, Sensualism, Materialism), now begin their development.

SECTION XXVIII.

LOCKE.

The founder of the realistic course and the father of modern Empiricism and Materialism, is John Locke, an Englishman. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was his predecessor and countryman,

se name we need here only mention, as it has no importance ept for the history of natural rights.

John Locke was born at Wrington, 1632. His student years levoted to philosophy and prominently to medicine, though his k health prevented him from practising as a physician. Few es of business interrupted his leisure, and he devoted his time stly to literary pursuits. His friendly relations with Lord hony Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, exerted a ghty influence upon his course in life. At the house of this inguished statesman and author he always found the most lial reception, and an intercourse with the most important a of England. In the year 1670 he sketched for a number of nds the first plan of his famous Essay on the Human Understanding, though the completed work did not appear till 1689. Locke died aged 72 in the year 1704. His writings are characterized by clearness and precision, openness and determinateness. More acute than profound in his philosophizing, he does not in this respect belie the characteristic of his nation. The fundamental thoughts and results of his philosophy have now become common property, especially among the English, though it should not therefore be forgotten that he is the first who has scientifically established them, and is, on this account, entitled to a true place

in the history of philosophy, even though his principle was want. ing in an inner capacity for development.

Locke's Philosophy (i. e. his theory of knowledge, for his whole philosophizing expends itself in investigating the faculty of knowing) rests upon two thoughts, to which he never ceases to revert first (negatively), there are no innate ideas; second (posi tively), all our knowledge arises from experience.

Many, says Locke, suppose that there are innate ideas which the soul receives coetaneous with its origin, and brings with it into the world. In order to prove that these ideas are innate, it is said that they universally exist, and are universally valid with all men. But admitting that this were so, such a fact would 、 prove nothing if this universal harmony could be explained in any other way. But men mistake when they claim such a fact. There is, in reality, no fundamental proposition, theoretical or practical, which would be universally admitted. Certainly there is no such practical principle, for the example of different people as well as of different ages shows that there is no moral rule uni versally admitted as valid. Neither is there a theoretical one for even those propositions which might lay the strongest claim to be universally valid, e. g. the proposition," what is, is," or— "it is imposible that one and the same thing should be and not be at the same time,"-receive by no means a universal assent. Children and idiots have no notion of these principles, and even uncultivated men know nothing of these abstract propositions. They cannot therefore have been imprinted on all men by nature. ♫ If ideas were innate, then they must be known by all from earliest childhood. For "to be in the understanding," and "to become known," is one and the same thing. The assertion therefore that these ideas are imprinted on the understanding while it does not know it, is hence a manifest contradiction. Just as little is gained by the subterfuge, that these principles come into the consciousness so soon as men use their reason. This affirmation is directly false, for these maxims which are called universal come into the consciousness much later than a great deal of other knowledge, and children e. g. give many proofs of their use of reason before